Protest in Rome, Italy (June, 2010).
Protest in Istanbul, Turkey (July, 2010).
A collective national identity can be viewed as a compilation of smaller, individualized identities. In Italy, a stereotypical Italian can be a person from the lazy south, the economy-driven north, or an immigrant who married a native Italian. Similarly, a Turk can live in Asia, Europe or even Kurdistan – a place where people wish to be recognized independently from Turkey. Regardless of the nature of the identity that individuals associate themselves with, in order to assert your accepted or wishful identity people must make their opinion known. Often, this statement takes the form of a public protest. Controlling and maintaining a national identity is also in the interest of a nation’s government. If identity were a coin, the government’s viewpoint, or side, is usually enforced by police who attempt to control protests representing the citizen’s perspective, or the flip side of the coin.
To a foreigner, police presence or force can be surprising and startling, while conversely a demonstration anywhere in the world often sparks curiosity and garners support for a specific cause. Police seem to have this effect on foreigners because each country accepts different police behavior. Therefore, the way in which police and protestors interact provides a clue as to the nature of national identity. For example, is the country a dictatorship or a democracy? From a distance I was able to capture demonstrator and police relations in both Rome and Istanbul. Despite the different reasons for protest, demonstration and police tactics appear very similar in these two major cities.
The first similarity that stands out in the two sets of photographs is the demonstrators’ use of color - both signs display light colored (yellow or white) letters on a red background. This is a strategic mechanism employed to gain attention and increase public awareness about the issue at hand. One can imagine that although the goal of a demonstration is to promote consciousness, these protestors do not want to provoke or gain excessive attention from the police. Police response to such a statement could give the foreigner a feel for how the government responds to citizen uprising. For example, do they feel threatened because people are not buying the propaganda, or is the government largely popular and not endangered by less popular politics? Interestingly, the flag being carried by the Italian demonstrators is a peace flag. Although I do not know about the general message of the photographed protest, this flag could be another strategic device to alert the polizia of their peaceful intentions.
Additionally, the pictures of police accurately reflect the size of the demonstrations. In Rome, the protest was very large, such that it filled and blocked off a main thoroughfare. The number of polizia and the formation they used to assert their presence, and control the protest, mirrored the arrangement of the demonstrators. On the other hand, the protest in Istanbul was much smaller in scale; essentially the entire group of people can be seen in the photograph. In this context the police appear rather tolerant, as if they are simply required to be there, and are small in number. Regardless of their number, the police in Istanbul and Rome were outfitted almost identically, with bulletproof vests, guns, and riot shields. This observation about dress highlights an intentional display of imposing power that out-does the balance in number that is created between protestors and police.
Taken together, these pictures give the foreigner a sense of tension between the citizen’s desired identities and police-enforced citizen compliance to the government’s laws and politics; both groups are making a statement. The protestors are attracting attention to an issue that they feel should be better represented while the police, a proxy for the government, work to establish a boundary with respect to how far the demonstration can proceed, or raise awareness. Little by little, as the boundary is moved forwards or back, individual perception and national sentiment changes, consequently leading to a unique concept of identity.
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